My Next Book...Year 5, Chapter 10

What Now? What Next?
You might have noticed that I haven’t been with you for a while. The reason is that I have been preoccupied with a very important (one might say global) project for The Drucker Institute, a rethinking of Leadership Network’s role in light of the astonishing growth of our major customer, megachurches (double the number in the past 5-6 years) still trying to crack the code on a new book, and two Halftime Institutes in the past two weeks.

Lots of thought currents smashing about in my brain – more seeing people and reading than time for writing which I do more carefully than you might think. I just received a “fact file” from friend and current wisdom figure, Jim Collins, who explained his routine in a Barnes & Noble.com interview this way:

“Collins says he finds the writing process a difficult one.”I can average no more than a page a day of high quality output – and those are long days!" he said in our interview. "If I produce a 30 page chapter, it will take me 30 days of work. I like what Michener said: 'I am not a master writer. I am a master rewriter."'

“Collins has been married to wife Joanne for 22 years; the pair got engaged four days after their first date. When I finished Good to Great , Joanne said, “It’s nice to have you back” -- even though I’d been sitting just 20 feet away in the Morris chair for all those months of writing. That’s just the nature of writing a book; it requires a degree of obsession and productive neurosis.

“A passionate rock climber, Collins likes to work early in the morning and then take a break to go climbing on the cliffs of Boulder or Eldorado Canyon.”No matter how wrapped up I am in a piece of work," he says, "it all melts away when I’m focused on the next ten feet of rock. I like to return in the afternoon for a good nap of 30 minutes to two hours, followed by a late afternoon creative work session before spending the evening with Joanne."

Wow! A page a day. Collins’ voicemail greeting says he is in “monk mode” when he is deep into a book. For me, I write on weekends at Still Point Farm. Dallas is all people and work – one conversation after another with people whose work I care about. I’m usually exhausted going to the Farm from the intensity of Dallas. It’s all working off of stored intellectual capital in Dallas – what’s next? who’s next? -- not taking in but pouring out. People – people – people. Thursday is a buffer day. Friday through Sunday – silence and solitude – what Dolly Parton charmingly refers to as “jeans, sweat shirt and God space.” For me: Linda space. She’s more outside or catching up with her close-ties and friends. Me inside reading and writing. Together each night. How I love this woman! My naps are shorter than Collins’. I take an hour walk in the afternoon. There are not rock faces to climb in East Texas.

Summer is a big refresh and take in time for me so these musings may get more infrequent. We’re off to Aspen for July … same house by the Roaring Fork River. Here is what I’m taking in my book bag this summer:

The World Is Curved: Hidden Dangers to the Global Economy by David M. Smick
David Smick keeps a low profile, but experts consider him one of the most insightful financial market strategists in the world. For more than two decades, he has conferred with central bankers (such as Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke) and advised top Wall Street executives and investors.

The World Is Curved reveals how today's risky environment came to be—and why the mortgage mess is a symptom of potentially far more devastating trouble. He wrestles with the two questions on everyone's mind: How bad could things really get in today's volatile economy? And what can we do about it?

Morning temperature 40° / afternoons around 80°

The Age of the Unthinkable: Why the New World Disorder Constantly Surprises Us And What We Can Do About It by Joshua Cooper Ramo
Today the very ideas that made America great imperil its future. Our plans go awry and policies fail.

In The Age of the Unthinkable, Joshua Cooper Ramo puts forth a revelatory new model for understanding our dangerously unpredictable world. Drawing upon history, economics, complexity theory, psychology, immunology, and the science of networks, he describes a new landscape of inherent unpredictability--and remarkable, wonderful possibility.

The Definitive Drucker: The Final Word from the Father of Modern Management by Elizabeth Haas Edersheim, Foreword by A. G. Lafley. Edersheim captures the last two years of Peter’s insights.

My Utmost Devotional Bible New King James Version (NKJV) by Thomas Nelson Publishing Co, Oswald Chambers

How The Mighty Fall: And Why Some Companies Never Give In by Jim Collins, -- four years of research by the principal post-Drucker question asker ©2009 Collins’ newest book. Just out.

Decline can be detected.
Decline can be reversed.
Collins' research project uncovered five step-wise stages of decline:
Stage 1: Hubris Born of Success
Stage 2: Undisciplined Pursuit of More
Stage 3: Denial of Risk and Peril
Stage 4: Grasping for Salvation
Stage 5: Capitulation to Irrelevance or Death

20:21 Vision: Twentieth-Century Lessons for the Twenty-First Century by Bill Emmott
The attacks on September 11, 2001, shook the rich West out of its complacency. The Chief Editor of The Economist looks back on the turbulent twentieth century in order to look forward.

Lapham’s Quarterly: Published four times a year, each issue of Lapham’s Quarterly adopts and explores a single theme. In 2008, for example, LQ’s first four issues were dedicated, respectively, to War, Money, Nature, and Education, each created with an aim to help readers find historical threads from Homer to Queen Elizabeth I to George Patton, from Aesop to Edith Wharton to Joan Didion. My study theme this year with my “personal trainer in literature,” Dr. Larry Allums, is MONEY – its effects on people. We’re using a Lapham’s Quarterly on that topic. A typical issue features approximately 100 “Voices in Time” — that is, appropriately themed selections drawn from the annals and archives of the past — and newly commissioned commentary and criticism from today’s preeminent scholars and writers. Myriad photographs, paintings, charts, graphs, and maps round out each issue’s 224 pages.

A stack of The New Yorker magazines – who has time to read their lengthy profiles except in the summer!

So What about You?

What is the rhythm of your days, your seasons?
Where are the special spaces that enhance the different themes of your life? Relationships? Silence and solitude? Recreation/escape, work, God space? Being in love space?

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Tell me how you respond, what you are thinking. Pass my musings on to your list.